Mr. John Galt—a Scotch writer
of considerable practice, the author of some Tragedies which were never read, of some Travels
which are never read, and of small Novels which are, in bad weather, occasionally read—has,
perhaps, on the strength of the commendation bestowed on these latter trifles by ourselves and
others, considered himself the proper person to become the biographer of Lord Byron. We have for months been undergoing newspaper
assurances that a more fitting person than Mr. Galt could not have
undertaken the work—and that a piece of more interesting biography would be found never to have
issued from the press. The usual announcements of “immediate publication,”—of
publication “early in the ensuing month,”—of publication “on Friday
next,” with the customary “sweet, reluctant, amorous delays” on the
part of the publishers,—have been uttered to provoke the appetite of the expectant reader, and
at length Mr. Galt’s long-promised Life of Byron is produced. We expected to find in the work
something to justify the multifarious puffing announcements—some original anecdotes—some
particulars not to be found in Dallas, Parry, Hunt, or Moore—some unpublished letters or poems of
Byron (the announcements hinted at “original
correspondence”)—some lineaments of character drawn from a familiar intercourse with, and
knowledge of, the mighty poet:—But no; Mr. Galt, who in his introduction
says, “My present task is one of considerable difficulty, but I have long had a notion
that some time or another it would fall to my lot to perform it,” is nearly the
last person that ought to have ventured upon writing the Life of Lord
Byron. He knew little of his lordship personally—he was an acquaintance, not a
friend:—he has not the mind to enter into and allow for the capricious wanderings and fine
prejudices of the poet:—he sits down, the Sir Fretful
Plagiary of biographers, with all the “excoriated
sensibility” which he charges upon his victim, and with splenetic candour, does the
kind-savage upon Lord Byron’s petty-larcenies; enumerating and
forgiving—lacerating and plastering almost at the same moment.

Lord Byron has had to suffer the posthumous animosities
which great men are invariably doomed to receive from friends. He has had his full share of
“bad biography” from those who sat at his table, used his purse,
purloined his conversation, mimicked his eccentricities, boasted of his friendship, and did not
know him. A jury of matrons has sat upon his fame. The Mrs. Candours, Mrs. Slipslops,
Mrs. Sneerwells, Mrs. Prues, and Mrs. Fretfuls have done their worst—and now, “Malice
domestic—foreign levy,—nothing can touch him futher!” What right had Captain Medwin to be the Lilliputian Boswell to that Brobdignag Johnson, Byron!—we are not quite sure that Dr. Kennedy was justified in publishing Lord
Byron’s “Conversations on Religion” without his sanction—and what quality in Mr. Galt—a steam-boat acquaintance, kindly and condescendingly
recognized by Lord Byron on two or three subsequent occasions—could mark
him as the biographer of the greatest poet that has risen for years! Mr. Hobhouse, when the fumes of a Westminster patriotism are
out of his head, and years have subdued his prejudices, and tempered his recollections, is the
person who alone ought to write, because he can write, the life of his friend, and the
world’s friend, Lord Byron.

Our readers will expect to see something of the book which Mr. Galt has taken the liberty of writing, and of which we have
taken the liberty of candidly speaking. We will give them, as well as our limits will permit, a
few of the very many bad passages which are written either in confused English or in bad
spirit. Mr. Galt is ambitious of writing in the “Ercles
vein,” and of course the glooms and hurricanes of Byron carry him into some very magnanimous figures, and truly original
groupings of words. Some the sentences remind us of the cage exhibited on Waterloo Bridge,
which contains a cat, a bird, a mouse, a rat, a dog, and a monkey—all living harmoniously
together; or of old Sambo’s selections of
“violent contrarities,” chosen as a present for his daughter, and right
pleasantly enumerated in the third canto of Don
Juan.

We shall commence our extracts, by presenting to our readers the 28th chapter of
the volume before us; because we think it is a key to the feeling in which the whole work is
written. The first sentence in the following passage, marked by us in italic, would seem to
have aroused all the biographer in the soul of Mr. Galt,
and to have coloured—nay stained the whole biography. What an abuse of wealth is the present
volume! The Israelites of old, with fine gold as a material, cast their idol in the molten
image of a calf; not that Lord Byron,—the late
Lord Byron, is now an object of idolatry with the present
Mr. Galt, whatever he may have been formerly. The living commoner,
among the rest, flings his heels at the dead. But there is little to boast of in kicking this
lifeless lion!

“A miff with Lord
Byron.—Remarkable coincidences.—Plagiarisms of his Lordship.

“There is a curious note in the memoranda which Byron kept in the year 1813, that I should not pass unnoticed, because it
refers to myself, and moreover is characteristic of the excoriated sensibility with which
his Lordship felt everything that touched or affected him or his.

“When I had read the Bride of
Abydos, I wrote to him my opinion of it, and mentioned that there was a
remarkable coincidence in the story, with a matter in which I had been interested. I have
no copy of the letter, and I forget the expressions employed, but Lord Byron seemed to think they implied that he had taken the story from
something of mine.

The note is:

“‘Galt says there is a coincidence between the first part of
‘The Bride’ and some story of his, whether published or not, I know not, never
having seen it. He is almost the last person on whom any one would commit
literary larceny, and I am not conscious of any witting thefts on any of the
genus. As to originality, all pretensions are ludicrous; there is nothing new under the
sun.’

THE ATHENÆUM.

553

“It is sufficiently clear that he was offended with what I had said, and
was somewhat excited. I have not been able at present to find his answer to my letter, but
it would appear by the subjoined that he had written to me something which led me to
imagine he was offended at my observations, and that I had in consequence deprecated his
wrath.

“‘My dear Galt, ‘Dec. 11, 1813.

“‘There was no offence—there could be none.
I thought it by no means impossible that we might have hit on something similar,
particularly as you are a dramatist, and was anxious to assure you of the truth, viz. that
I had not wittingly seized upon plot, sentiment, or incident; and I am very glad that I
have not in any respect trenched upon your subjects. Something still more singular is, that
the first part, where you have found a coincidence in some events
within your observations on life, was drawn
from observation of mine also, and I meant to have gone on with the
story, but on second thoughts, I thought myself two centuries at least too late for the subject; which, though admitting of very
powerful feeling and description, yet is not adapted for this age, at least this country.
Though the finest works of the Greeks, one of Schiller’s and Alfieri’s, in modern times, besides several of our old (and best) dramatists, have been grounded on incidents of a similar cast, I
therefore altered it as you perceive, and in so doing have weakened the whole, by
interrupting the train of thought; and in composition I do not think second thoughts are the best, though second expressions
may improve the first ideas.

“‘I do not know how other men feel towards those they have met
abroad, but to me there seems a kind of tie established between all who have met together
in a foreign country, as if we had met in a state of pre-existence, and were talking over a
life that has ceased; but I always look forward to renewing my travels; and though you, I think, are now stationary, if I can at all forward your
pursuits there as well as here, I shall be truly glad in the
opportunity.

Ever yours very sincerely, B.

“‘P.S. I believe I leave town for a day or two on Monday, but
after that I am always at home, and happy to see you till half-past two.’

“This letter was dated on Saturday, the 11th of September, 1813. On
Sunday, the 12th, he made the following other note in his memorandum book:

“‘By Galt’s answer, I
find it is some story in real life, and not any work with which my
late composition coincides. It is still more singular, for mine is drawn from existence also.’

“The most amusing part of this little fracas is the denial of his
Lordship, as to pilfering the thoughts and fancies of others; for it so happens, that the
first passage of The Bride of Abydos, the
poem in question, is almost a literal and unacknowledged translation from Goethe, which was pointed out in some of the periodicals
soon after the work was published.

“Then, as to his not thieving from me or mine, I believe the fact to be
as he has stated; but there are singular circumstances connected with some of his other
productions, of which the account is at least curious.

“On leaving England I began to write a poem in the Spenserian measure.
It was called The Unknown, and was
intended to describe, in narrating the voyages and adventures of a pilgrim, who had
embarked for the Holy Land, the scenes I expected to visit. I was
occasionally engaged in this composition during the passage with Lord Byron from Gibraltar to Malta, and he knew what I was about. In
stating this, I beg to be distinctly understood, as in no way whatever intending to
insinuate that this work had any influence on the composition of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which Lord
Byron began to write in Albania; but it must be considered as
something extraordinary, that the two works should have been so similar in plan, and in the structure of the verse. His Lordship never saw my attempt
that I know of, nor did I his poem until it was printed. It is needless to add, that beyond
the plan and verse there was no other similarity between the two works; I wish there had
been.

“His Lordship has published a poem, called The Curse of Minerva, the subject of which is the vengeance
of the goddess on Lord Elgin for the rape of the
Parthenon. It has so happened that I wrote at Athens a burlesque poem on nearly the same
subject (mine relates to the vengeance of all the gods) which I called The Atheniad; the manuscript was sent to his Lordship
in Asia Minor, and returned to me through Mr.
Hobhouse. His Curse of Minerva, I saw for the
first time in 1828, in Galignani’s edition of
his works.

“In The Giaour, which he
published a short time before The Bride of
Abydos, he has this passage, descriptive of the anxiety with which the mother of
Hassan looks out for the arrival of her son:

The browsing camels’ bells are tinkling—

His mother look’d from her lattice high;

She saw the dews of eve besprinkling

The parterre green beneath her eye:

She saw the planets faintly twinkling—

’Tis twilight—sure his train is nigh.

She could not rest in the garden bower,

But gazed through the grate of his steepest tower:

Why comes he not—and his steeds are fleet—

Nor shrink they from the summer heat?

Why sends not the bridegroom his promised gift;

Is his heart more cold or his barb less swift?

“His Lordship was well read in the Bible, and the book of Judges, chap. 5,
and verse 28, has the following passage:—

“‘The mother of Sisera looked out at a
window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming; why tarry the
wheels of his chariot?’

“It was, indeed, an early trick of his Lordship to filch good things. In
the lamentation for Kirke White, in which he compares
him to an eagle wounded by an arrow feathered from his own wing, he says,

So the struck eagle, stretch’d upon the plain,

No more through rolling clouds to soar again,

View’d his own feather on the fatal dart

And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.

“The ancients have certainly stolen the best ideas of the moderns; this
very thought may be found in the works of that ancient-modern, Waller:

That eagle’s fate and mine are one,

Which on the shaft that made him die,

Espied a feather of his own

Wherewith he wont to soar on high.

“His Lordship disdained to commit any larceny on me; and no doubt the
following passage from The Giaour is perfectly
original:

It is as if the dead could feel

The icy worm around them steal;

And shudder as the reptiles creep

To revel o’er their rotting sleep,

Without the power to scare away

The cold consumers of their clay.

“I do not claim any paternity in these lines: but not the most judicious
action of all my youth was to publish certain dramatic sketches, and his Lordship had the
printed book in his possession long before The
Giaour was published, and may have read the following passage in a dream, which was
intended to be very hideous:

———Then did I hear around

The churme and chirruping of busy reptiles

At hideous banquet on the royal dead:—

Full soon methought the loathsome epicures

Came thick on me, and underneath my shroud

I felt the many-foot and beetle creep,

And on my breast the cold worm coil and crawl.

“However, I have said quite enough on this subject, both as respects
myself and his seeming plagiarisms, which might be multiplied to legions. Such occasional
accidental imitations are not things of much importance. All poets, and authors in
general, avail themselves of their reading and knowledge to enhance the interest of their
works. It can only be considered as one of Lord
Byron’s spurts of spleen, that he felt so much about a
“coincidence,” which ought not to have disturbed him; but it may be thought by the
notice taken of it, that it disturbs myself more than it really does; and that it would have
been enough to have merely said—Perhaps, when some friend is hereafter doing as indulgently for
me, the same kind of task that I have undertaken for Byron, there may be
found among my memoranda notes as little flattering to his Lordship, as those in his concerning
me. I hope, however, that friend will have more respect for my memory than to imitate the taste
of Mr. Moore.” p. 180—5.

A miff indeed!—There is something more than natural in all this, if philosophy
could but find it out. Mr. Galt would infer that his
poems suggested the “Childe Harold”
and the “Curse of Minerva,” if he
mean anything by particularizing these “remarkable coincidences.” One could
almost have been induced to wish that Mr. Galt had written more verse, if
his bellows-ing really originated such mighty music from so lofty an instrument! Mr. Moore had better take care how he die, because his wicked
publication of Lord Byron’s remark on Mr.
Galt’s unfitness for being robbed, will, certes, irritate the latter to
write a life.

The eighth chapter of the volume announces the first acquaintance of Mr. Galt with Lord Byron.
The concluding sentences of the extract are curiously inlaid, and we most especially recommend
them to the notice of our readers.

“It was at Gibraltar that I first fell in with Lord Byron. I had arrived there in the packet from England, in indifferent
health, on my way to Sicily. I had then no intention of travelling. I only went a trip,
intending to return home after spending a few weeks in Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia; having,
before my departure, entered into the Society of Lincoln’s Inn, with the design of
studying the law.

“At this time, my friend, the late Colonel
Wright, of the artillery, was secretary to the Governor; and during the
short stay of the packet at the Rock, he invited me to the hospitalities of his house, and
among other civilities gave me admission to the garrison library.

“The day, I well remember, was exceedingly sultry. The air was sickly;
and if the wind was not a sirocco, it was a withering levanter—oppressive to the functions
of life, and to an invalid denying all exercise. Instead of rambling over the
fortifications, I was, in consequence, constrained to spend the hottest part of the day in
the library; and, while sitting there, a young man came in and seated himself opposite to
me at the table where I was reading. Something in his appearance attracted my attention.
His dress indicated a Londoner of some fashion, partly by its neatness and simplicity, with
just so much of a peculiarity of style as served to show, that although he belonged to the
order of metropolitan beaux, he was not altogether a common one.

“I thought his face not unknown to me; I began to conjecture where I
could have seen him; and, after an unobserved scrutiny, to speculate both as to his
character and vocation. His physiognomy was prepossessing and intelligent, but ever and
anon his brows lowered and gathered; a habit, as I then thought, with a degree of
affectation in it, probably first assumed for picturesque effect and energetic expression;
but which I afterwards discovered was undoubtedly the occasional scowl of some unpleasant
reminiscence: it was certainly disagreeable—forbidding—but still the general cast of his
features was impressed with elegance and character.

“At dinner, a large party assembled at Colonel Wright’s; among others the Countess of

“Hobhouse had, a short time
before I left London, published certain translations and poems rather respectable in their way, and I had
seen the work, so that his name was not altogether strange to me. Byron’s was familiar—the Edinburgh Review had made it so, and still more the satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but I was
not conscious of having seen the persons of either.

“On the following evening I embarked early, and soon after the two
travellers came on board; in one of whom I recognised the visitor to the library, and he
proved to be Lord Byron. In the little bustle and
process of embarking their luggage, his Lordship affected, as it seemed to me, more
aristocracy than befitted his years, or the occasion; and I then thought of his singular
scowl, and suspected him of pride and irascibility. The impression that evening was not
agreeable, but it was interesting; and that forehead mark, the frown, was calculated to
awaken curiosity, and beget conjectures.

“Hobhouse, with more of the
commoner, made himself one of the passengers at once; but Byron held himself aloof, and sat on the rail, leaning on the mizzen
shrouds, inhaling, as it were, poetical sympathy, from the gloomy Rock, then dark and stern
in the twilight. There was in all about him that evening much waywardness; he spoke
petulantly to Fletcher, his valet; and was evidently
ill at ease with himself, and fretful towards others. I thought he would turn out an
unsatisfactory shipmate; yet there was something redeeming in the tones of his voice, when,
some time after he had indulged his sullen meditation, he again addressed
Fletcher; so that, instead of finding him ill-natured, I was soon
convinced he was only capricious.

“Our passage to Sardinia was tardy, owing to calms; but, in other
respects, pleasant. About the third day Byron relented
from his rapt mood, as if he felt it was out of place, and became playful, and disposed to
contribute his fair proportion to the general endeavour to wile away the tediousness of the
dull voyage. Among other expedients for that purpose, we had recourse to shooting at
bottles. Byron, I think, supplied the pistols, and was the best shot,
but not very pre-eminently so. In the calms, the jolly-boat was several times lowered; and,
on one of those occasions, his Lordship, with the captain, caught a turtle—I rather think
two—we likewise hooked a shark, part of which was dressed for breakfast, and tasted,
without relish; your shark is but a cannibal dainty.

“As we approached the gulf, or bay, of Cagliari, in Sardinia, a strong
north wind came from the shore, and we had a whole disagreeable day of tacking, but next
morning, it was Sunday, we found ourselves at anchor near the mole, where we landed.
Byron, with the captain, rode out some distance into
the country, while I walked with Mr. Hobhouse about
the town: we left our cards for the consul, and Mr.
Hill, the ambassador, who invited us to dinner. In the evening we landed
again, to avail ourselves of the invitation; and, on this occasion,
Byron and his Pylades dressed
themselves as aides-de-camp—a circumstance which, at the time, did not tend to improve my
estimation of the solidity of the character of either. But such is the force of habit: it
appeared a less exceptionable affectation in the young peer than in the commoner.

“Had we parted at Cagliari, it is probable that I should have retained
a much more favourable recollection of Mr. Hobhouse
than of Lord Byron; for he was a cheerful companion,
full of odd and droll stories, which he told extremely well; he was also
good-humoured and intelligent—altogether an advantageous specimen of a well-educated
English gentleman. Moreover, I was at the time afflicted with a nervous dejection, which
the occasional exhilaration produced by his anecdotes and college tales often materially
dissipated, though, for the most part, they were more after the manner and matter of
Swift than of Addison.

“Byron was, during the passage, in
delicate health, and upon an abstemious regimen. He rarely tasted wine, nor more than half
a glass, mingled with water, when he did. He ate little; no animal food, but only bread and
vegetables. He reminded me of the ghoul that picked rice with a needle; for it was
manifest, that he had not acquired his knowledge of the world by always dining so sparely.
If my remembrance is not treacherous, he only spent one evening in the cabin with us—the
evening before we came to anchor at Cagliari; for, when the lights were placed, he made
himself a man forbid, took his station on the railing between the pegs on which the sheets
are belayed and the shrouds, and there, for hours, sat in silence, enamoured, it may be, of
the moon. All these peculiarities, with his caprices, and something inexplicable in the
cast of his metaphysics, while they served to awaken interest, contributed little to
conciliate esteem. He was often strangely rapt—it may have been from his
genius; and, had its grandeur and darkness been then divulged, susceptible of
explanation; but, at the time, it threw, as it were, around him the sackcloth of
penitence. Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlins, in the tranquillity of the moonlight,
churming an inarticulate melody, he seemed almost apparitional, suggesting dim
reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding-sheet,
crowned with a halo.”

Pheu!

“Plague on’t—I ne’er was so beset with words

Since first I learnt to call my brother’s father, dad!”

The greater part of the book is occupied with Mr.
Galt’s travels in company with Childe Harold,—worked up in rough prose,
studded with extracts from the poem. Those of our readers who have read the notes to the
“Childe Harold,” and Mr. Hobhouse’s two great quartos, need not traverse the ground again. What an
ingenious art is book-making!

The following passage is worth extracting; it is deeply characteristic of
Lord Byron:—

“On the night after his arrival at the Abbey, the waiting-woman of
Mrs. Byron, in passing the door of the room
where the corpse lay, heard the sound of some one sighing heavily within, and on entering
found his Lordship sitting in the dark beside the bed. She remonstrated with him for so
giving way to grief, when he burst into tears, and exclaimed, “I had but one
friend in the world, and she is gone.” Of the fervency of his sorrow I do
therefore think there can be no doubt; the very endeavour which he made to conceal it by
indifference, was a proof of its depth and anguish, though he hazarded the strictures of
the world by the indecorum of his conduct on the occasion of the funeral. Having declined
to follow the remains himself, he stood looking from the hall door at the procession, till
the whole had moved away; and then, turning to one of the servants, the only person left,
he desired him to fetch the sparring-gloves, and proceeded with him to his usual exercise.
But the scene was impressive, and spoke eloquently of a grieved heart; he sparred in
silence all the time, and the servant thought that he hit harder than was his habit: at
last he suddenly flung away the gloves and retired to his own room.”

It is but justice to Mr. Galt to give the
following; it is good, true, and sensible writing:—

“I have never been able to understand why it has been so often supposed
that Lord Byron
was actuated in the composition of his different works by any other motive than
enjoyment: perhaps no poet had ever less of an ulterior purpose in his mind during the fits of
inspiration (for the epithet may be applied correctly to him and to the moods in which he was
accustomed to write) than this singular and impassioned man. Those who imagine that he had any
intention to impair the reverence due to religion, or to weaken the hinges of moral action,
give him credit for far more design and prospective purpose than he possessed. They could have
known nothing of the man, the main defect of whose character, in relation to everything, was in
having too little of the element or principle of purpose. He was a thing of impulses, and to
judge of what he either said or did, as the results of predetermination, was not only to do the
harshest injustice, but to show a total ignorance of his character. His whole fault, the
darkest course of those flights and deviations from propriety which have drawn upon him the
severest animadversion, lay in the unbridled state of his impulses. He felt, but never
reasoned. I am led to make these observations by noticing the ungracious, or, more justly, the
illiberal spirit in which “The Prophecy of
Dante,” which was published with the “Marino Faliero,” has been treated by the anonymous
author of ‘Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Lord
Byron.’”

The description of “The Guiccioli” is taken from Leigh
Hunt’sBook; and our
readers are familiar with the particulars of Lord
Byron’s personal presence and exertions in Greece, and of his fever and
death. Not an iota of information is added to that which has been already given to the world.
The last moments of Byron, as detailed by Fletcher, his faithful servant, are as affecting as the good death of a great
man can make them.

Mr. Galt’s friendship breaks out continually. What
would Lord Byron have said to his biographer, if he could
have read the following sketch of his mother—a mother whom he loved,—forced too heedlessly into
a work professing to be the Life of Lord Byron:—

“However this may have been, it is certain that Byron came to an embarrassed inheritance, both as respected his property and
the character of his race; and, perhaps, though his genius suffered nothing by the
circumstance, it is to be regretted that he was still left under the charge of his mother; a
woman without judgment or self-command, alternately spoiling her child by indulgence,
irritating him by her self-willed obstinacy, and, what was still worse, amusing him by her
violence, and disgusting him by fits of inebriety. Sympathy for her
misfortunes would be no sufficient apology for concealing her defects; they undoubtedly had a
material influence on her son, and her appearance was often the subject of his childish
ridicule. She was a short and corpulent person. She rolled in her gait, and
would, in her rage, sometimes endeavour to catch him for the purpose of inflicting
punishment, while he would run round the room, mocking her menaces and
mimicking her motions.” p. 23-4.

As a specimen of the Captain Grand in style, (as our
author so broadly phrases it,) we must give the following delectable morceau. Will our readers have the kindness to endeavour to work the sentences in
italics by the rules of common sense, and transmit to us the product.

“About three weeks or a month after he had left Athens, I went by a
circuitous route to Smyrna, where I found him waiting with Mr.
Hobhouse, to proceed with the Salsette frigate, then
ordered to Constantinople, to bring away Mr. Adair, the
ambassador. He had, in the meantime, visited Ephesus, and acquired some knowledge of the
environs of Smyrna; but he appeared to have been less interested by what he

THE ATHENÆUM.

555

had seen there than by the adventures of his Albanian tour. Perhaps I did him injustice, but
I thought he was also, in that short space, something changed, and not with improvement.
Towards Mr. Hobhouse, he seemed less cordial, and was altogether, I should
say, having no better phrase to express what I would describe, more of a
Captain Grand than improved in his manners, and more disposed to hold his own opinion
than I had ever before observed in him. I was particularly struck with this at dinner, on the
day after my arrival. We dined together with a large party at the consul’s, and he seemed
inclined to exact a deference to his dogmas, that was more lordly than philosophical. One of
the naval officers present, I think the captain of the Salsette, felt,
as well as others, this overweening, and announced a contrary opinion on some question
connected with the politics of the late Mr. Pitt with so
much firm good sense, that Lord Byron was perceptibly
rebuked by it, and became reserved, as if he deemed that sullenness enhanced dignity. I never in the whole course of my acquaintance saw him kithe so unfavourably
as he did on that occasion. In the course of the evening, however, he condescended to thaw,
and before the party broke up, his austerity began to leaf, and hide its thorns under the
influence of a relenting temperament. It was, however, too evident—at least it was so
to me—that without intending wrong, or any offence, the unchecked humour of his temper was, by
its caprices, calculated to prevent him from ever gaining that regard to which his talents and
freer moods, independently of his rank, ought to have entitled him. Such men become objects of
solicitude, but never of esteem.” p. 130-1.

We are compelled here to close the volume. We had intended to give a few of
Mr. Galt’s attempts at word-coining. He is nearly as eminent as
Sir Charles Wetherell, not only in the originality
of the coinage, but in the boldness of the uttering. We will endeavour to make a small
collection by the time our next number appears.

The volume, as to quantity of printing and paper, is remarkably cheap and there
are two copperplates—of Lord Byron and the Countess Guiccioli—which are extremely neat. We fear, however,
that the publishers, whether they have a “miff” with Mr.
Galt, will have to advertise the first number of the “National
Library,” as Lady Morgan’s publications have
been advertised by them, at half price, “on account of the great number of copies on
hand.”

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Sir Robert Adair (1763-1855)
English diplomat; he was Whig MP for Appleby (1799-1802) and Camelford (1802-12), a
friend and disciple of Charles James Fox, and ambassador to Constantinople, 1809-10. He was
ridiculed by Canning and Ellis in The Rovers.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
English politician and man of letters, with his friend Richard Steele he edited The Spectator (1711-12). He was the author of the tragedy Cato (1713).

James Boswell (1740-1795)
Scottish man of letters, author of The Life of Samuel Johnson
(1791).

Thomas Bruce, seventh earl of Elgin (1766-1841)
British ambassador to Constantinople (1799); with the permission of the Turks he removed
the Parthenon marbles which were purchased for the British Museum in 1816.

Robert Charles Dallas (1754-1824)
English poet, novelist, and translator who corresponded with Byron. His sister Charlotte
Henrietta Dallas (d. 1793) married Captain George Anson Byron (1758-1793); their son George
Anson Byron (1789-1868) inherited Byron's title in 1824.

William Fletcher (1831 fl.)
Byron's valet, the son of a Newstead tenant; he continued in service to the end of the
poet's life, after which he was pensioned by the family. He married Anne Rood, formerly
maid to Augusta Leigh, and was living in London in 1831.

Giovanni Antonio Galignani (1757-1821)
Bookseller and from 1814 publisher of Galignani's Messenger, an
English newspaper issued from Paris.

John Galt (1779-1839)
Scottish novelist who met Byron during the first journey to Greece and was afterwards his
biographer; author of Annals of the Parish (1821).

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)
German poet, playwright, and novelist; author of The Sorrows of Young
Werther (1774) and Faust (1808, 1832).

William Noel- Hill, third baron Berwick (1773-1842)
English diplomat and book-collector; he was envoy to Sardinia from 1807 to 1824 and
minister at Naples before he succeeded to the title in 1832.

John Cam Hobhouse, baron Broughton (1786-1869)
Founder of the Cambridge Whig Club; traveled with Byron in the orient, radical MP for
Westminster (1820); Byron's executor; after a long career in politics published Some Account of a Long Life (1865) later augmented as Recollections of a Long Life, 6 vols (1909-1911).

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of The
Examiner and The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
English man of letters, among many other works he edited A Dictionary
of the English Language (1755) and Shakespeare (1765), and wrote Lives of the Poets (1779-81).

James Kennedy (1793 c.-1827)
Scottish physician in the British forces; his experiences with Byron in Cephalonia were
published as Conversations on Religion with Lord Byron
(1830).

Thomas Medwin (1788-1869)
Lieutenant of dragoons who was with Byron and Shelley at Pisa; the author of Conversations of Lord Byron (1824) and The Life of
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols (1847).

Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
Irish poet and biographer, author of the Irish Melodies (1807-34),
The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and Lalla
Rookh (1817); he was Byron's close friend and designated biographer.

Thomas Sheridan (1775-1817)
Actor, son of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Elizabeth Linley; he was manager of Drury
Lane when it burned in 1808; he died of consumption, the disease that killed his
mother.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Dean of St Patrick's, Scriblerian satirist, and author of Battle of the
Books with Tale of a Tub (1704), Drapier
Letters (1724), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729).

Edmund Waller (1606-1687)
Poet and politician remembered for the deviousness of his politics, the wealth of his
estate, and the smoothness of his verse. His lyrics addressed to Sacharissa were much
admired.

John Watkins (1765-1831 fl.)
English schoolmaster, biographer, and associate of Samuel Badcock; he compiled a Universal Biographical and Historical Dictionary (1800) and wrote
the first life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Henry Kirke White (1785-1806)
Originally a stocking-weaver; trained for the law at Cambridge where he was a
contemporary of Byron; after his early death his poetical Remains
were edited by Robert Southey (2 vols, 1807) with a biography that made the poet
famous.

Colonel Wright (1808 fl.)
Not identified; he was secretary to Hew Dalrymple when governor of Gibraltar and a friend
of John Galt.